Teacher brings robots to elementary school

Jan 25, 2017 05:07PM
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By Tori LaRue

Ty Levesque and Spencer Call, both fifth-graders at Rose Creek Elementary school, organize a robotics kit during the school’s first before-school robotics club meeting. Cammie Chang, a sixth-grade teacher at the school started the club after receiving a grant from Kihomac, a company that works to renew and extend aerospace investments. (Tori La Rue/City Journals)

Sixth-grade
teacher Cammie Chang didn’t want her students to have to wait until middle
school and high school to have exposure to engineering, so she started a
before-school robotics club at Rose Creek Elementary.

“My
husband’s in the field, but he really didn’t have the opportunity to study like
this until high school,” Chang said. “If you’re not getting exposed early, you
may lose your chance to go into something like this. Most of the time in high
school students have already chosen their interests and cliques.”

With
the sixth-grade curriculum expanding in the 2017–18 year to include more
experiments and hands-on approaches to science, Chang said she thought it was
the perfect time to get the school’s fifth- and sixth-graders more interested
in the fun parts of science, technology, engineering and math—or STEM—learning.

Chang
had her eye on Lego robotics kits, but the school couldn’t afford them without
help. For just five robot kits, it would cost the school nearly $2,000. Chang
sought alternative funding by writing a mini-grant to the company for which her
husband works, Kihomac, which specializes in renewing and extending aerospace
investments through technical data development, systems and software
engineering, reverse engineering and prototyping and complex manufacturing.

The
president of Kihomac granted Chang the $2,000. Jordan School District also
bought Chang a robot for starting up the club, bringing Chang’s total number of
robots up to six, enough to start Rose Creek’s first robotics club.

Nine
students arrived for the first club meeting Jan. 10. Although the first
meeting’s focus was on organizing and getting acquainted with the pieces of the
robotics kits, students were already concocting ideas for the robots they
wanted to create later.

“I’d
like to build one that could go get me a soda out of the fridge,” fifth-grader
Spencer Call said. “That would be really cool.”

Madison
Sorensen, a sixth-grader, said she was hoping to program a robot to lift
something up. Her robotics club partner, Sierra Cowley, agreed, adding that it
would be exciting to see a robot do anything, as long as it was something that
they programmed it to do.

Sierra
said she got into coding and programming in fourth grade, so she said she was
excited to use those talents in the robotics club where she could create
something that would move on its own. The club may also help Sierra in her
future career plans, she said, adding that she’s considering becoming a
computer programmer as one of her top three career options.

Maison,
who wants to become a lawyer or a nurse, said the robotics class can also help
her progress toward her future professional goals.

“These
robots—they could teach you how to problem solve, and that can help you learn
new things anywhere,” she said.

While
the club will work on its own this year and get a grasp on how to work their
new robotics kits, complete with a robot brain, sound sensor, motion detector,
touch sensor, ultrasonic sensor and gyro sensor, Chang said she hopes to expand
the club’s reach next year reaching out to similar clubs at other elementary
schools and meeting up for robot competitions and games.

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